The best news is: it’s still free!

I desperately tried to stay up the entire night for this announcement. Really. When you start to read all the various speculations that players have come up with on the SRK boards, it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement. Needless to say, sleep took precedence over the not-so-uber announcement Capcom lead us all to believe. No folks, Dee Jay and T. Hawk aren’t coming out as DLC… yet.

Contrary to the popular (and not-so-popular) beliefs, Capcom’s super, special, seeeeecret news turned out to be a pimped out press release (which is easy to take thanks to Seth’s revision) revealing the official date for the highly anticipated “Championship Mode” update announced several weeks prior to SFIV’s console debut. Some of you might recall the intentions to present this update absolutely free. Well guess what? It’s still F-R-E-E. Despite the fact we all broke down and invested in those alternate costumes for a small fee, Capcom kept their word and our wallets get to remain in our pockets… for now.

Capcom Unity goes into extensive detail regarding what fans can expect. You can hit up the link here to get the full scoop, but the short version goes like this:

New grading systems – Players will receive a new ranking system called Grade Points (GP) based on every matchup they complete divided into 5 levels. This allows participants of any skill level to find optimal challenges without getting their digital counterparts and egos demolished. Upon reaching a certain GP level grants you access to enter exclusive tournaments where you’ll earn SFIV’s equivalent of Monopoly money or Championship Points (CP) for every tournament win you net. In similar fashion to the original ranking system — the amount of the prize pot corresponds to the skill of the player.

Stop counter picking – Double blind selections is back, which means they’ll be no more experiences where someone pretends they’re going to pick Gief, but runs to Ken/Ryu/Akuma at the last minute.

“This is how it’s done. Here, watch…” — The reply mode is especially exciting for me since I’ve spent more time at YouTube watching high-level and other exceptionally impressive matches from skilled players stateside and abroad. In the CE mode, the top 5000 players will have the opportunity to upload a match which everyone else can watch at their leisure. There’s also some platform-specific features thrown in too: 360 users can “vote” and have the option to enable input commands so you can actually view the players inputs as they’re played out in real-time (!) PS3’s offers seems a bit more goofy, as you can vote on videos based on “their characteristics being amusing or beautiful.

Tigeeeeeeeeer, ragequit – If you’re tired of all the deliberate people reaching for their ethernet cables to avoid a loss, this new update will put all of that to an end. Every time someone disconnects in a match, the system will dock your progress in the tournament, so pullers will not be able to advance. I am assuming this will also be included in standard matches (I hope) because this would totally discourage people from ragequitting altogether, especially since now you’ll be able to see everyone’s disconnect percentage! Mwahaha.

The fun goes down next week on April 24th… that’s one week away in case you’re not by a calendar. Start brushing up on those deadly tactics (or come up with some if you’ve been the victim of beatdowns far too often).

No sessions found. Search again? And again, and…

We’re just under 3 and a half hours away before Easter vacation and how do you think I wanted to spend that time? Playing Street Fighter IV, naturally. Sadly, Microsoft’s servers have decided to make a change of plans in my schedule preventing yours truly from getting his usual weekly fight session on a little early.

(more…)